E48 – Editing Series versus Stand Alones

Show Notes

In this episode, Miss Catherine M.H. and V.E. Griffith discuss the differences to keep in mind when editing series versus stand-alone novels.

The Revision Wizards are at https://www.revisionwizards.com
V.E. Griffith’s website: https://www.vegriffith.com
Miss Catherine M.H.’s website: https://www.scribes-pen.com

Transcript at: https://revisionwizards.com/?p=2455

Transcript

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Welcome to the Revision Wizards podcast. I’m Miss Catherine M.H., and I’m joined by my co-host from the rival school of magic, V.E. Griffith.

[V.E. Griffith]
This week we’re going to dive into some of the differences between editing series and editing standalone novels. So, Ms. Katherine, is there a difference?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yes, I think there is. We can look at it from, because we’re both two different types of editors. Definitely from a developmental edit or a diagnostic edit, it is definitely different.

From line editing, what do you think?

[V.E. Griffith]
From my style of line editing, yes, it is different, and it can be more challenging to do a series, especially earlier in the series. But if you’re just looking at sentence construction, no. My style of editing, I call it line editing, but I also include elements of developmental editing, I find.

So I wind up paying attention to things like open and closed loops, hints that are dropped, those kinds of things. So those are, you know, that’s the kind of thing that you might run into from me. So tell me more about the differences for you.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
The differences for me are, and this will sound strange, but the plot. Because you’ll have open threads, and those are plots that have not been finished when you’re looking at a series. And if you’re looking at a one-off, those are things you’ve left undone, or maybe didn’t need to be in the book at all anyway.

So I think it varies in that sense, where I’m looking at how large of a where I am paying very close attention to, you’ve left off here, you’re building breadcrumbs here, did you mean to build breadcrumbs? Or was that not supposed to be in this book? So for me, when I’m looking at a series, I start picking up on, first off, how many books are you thinking?

If you don’t know, I’m one of those people who doesn’t know. And if you’re looking at a standalone novel, you’re definitely looking for that closure, and a lot of those little threads or subplots being closed up. You might be able to get away with leaving something open with a little bit of mystery, but most of the time, you’re going to close up everything and have a neat, nice little package.

[V.E. Griffith]
I find a lot the same thing. I try and pay attention to open and close loops. I try and make sure that if there is some unresolved something in, for example, the first novel of a series, that I intend for it to be unresolved, and that it makes it into my story Bible so that I know that it’s unresolved, and I don’t just leave it hanging for nine books before coming back to it.

And so I want to make sure that all of those things are tracked. This in some ways appeals to the spreadsheet nerd in me, but I have to be careful to make sure that I keep track of all of those things, and that when I insert foreshadowing or future references or things like that, that those are actually intentional, and that I’m going to remember that they’re there, and I’m going to deal with them. Even if I don’t have a firm plan for how to deal with them, I have a scene in my current first book that is going to be an unresolved issue that probably won’t show back up until the third, but I need it to be there.

And so I need to make sure that in the third, I have the mirror scene where the character does the same thing and either makes the same choice or makes a different choice or does something that brings that circle to a close.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, mirror scenes are something to definitely look for, especially if you’re mirroring different characters. So I will definitely be looking for character arcs, and those vary depending on if it’s a series or not, because how much development do you want a character to experience per book is important to figure out as well, like which level do you want them at at the end of one book versus the end of another one. So that’s definitely something that I would be taking a look at.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yeah, and you want to pay attention to your lead characters or your main characters over the course, your plan for them over the course of the series. For example, I have one main character, one viewpoint character in my first book, but the second one is going to go to two viewpoint characters primarily because I think it would be cool to do it. There’s no real growth arc for the second main character in the first book.

And so I need to make sure that the person that character is, is consistent through the first book and only really begins to grow and change in the second. So you want to have, even if you don’t have all of your scenes plotted out for all three of your books or however many are in your series, you do frequently want to have a general idea of where you’re going so that you can at least start on the right path at the beginning.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Another thing, and it could just be me because I’m very forgetful at times when it comes to my characters, but making sure that there are consistencies, that you have your character’s color not changing in the middle of a series. And so that is something that I would be looking for and making sure that those consistencies are staying there the entire series. So I guess another thing that we would really be looking for would be how much changes book to book.

Are you doing something where it’s very long? It’s like an epic series? Are you doing something like Jack Reacher, where it’s the same character, just new zone, where each book could technically be a standalone, but is also in a series.

So when we’re looking at things, we really need to kind of know that in order to understand what things will wrap up and what things that you can have left open. Or if you take like a romance series, and Bridgerton is a good one. You meet all of the Bridgertons, but each book has its own ending.

And you know which of the characters is going to go next at the end of the book. So that way, you know, this is the next next book in the series, but it’s still technically its own standalone, but it’s a full series. So things like that, we would be looking for.

[V.E. Griffith]
The other thing that I like to pay attention to, in terms of from one book to another, is looking at the time period between books. Is there a time period between books during which the characters will change again, off camera? So for example, if you have 30 years between the end of book one and the beginning of book two, a character is going to grow and change naturally in that time.

If you have no time at all, then you’re going to start from where you left off, and you need to account for that. Think about that, and think about how to explain that backstory. If you do have change, where did that change come from?

You’ll need to sprinkle that in, in terms of flashbacks, or in terms of some kind of exposition, or some kind of dialogue, or something to explain why Sally doesn’t believe that anymore. What changed in her life that changed her feelings?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
What would you say is the most challenging thing about editing a one-off?

[V.E. Griffith]
I think, honestly, one-offs are pretty easy to edit. You just need to make sure that you have all of your loops closed, unless you absolutely, positively intend to keep them open. It’s really a question of intent, and tying up all your loose ends.

That’s the big thing for me. I have edited standalone novels. I’ve edited parts of series.

And for me, that’s the big thing, is just making sure at the end of a standalone, that all of your questions are answered, all of your T’s are dotted, all of your I’s are crossed.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, I would say the hardest thing is the character. The world building, and keeping that all together, that’s good. But making sure that the character realistically changes, and has some of those themes that the author wants to present, is the most difficult for me.

Because you also do get that, I’m a reader sense. We are readers when we’re reading these books. So sometimes you do really enjoy a character, but you’re like, I wouldn’t have seen them going that way.

And you still have to remember, you’re editing someone else’s. So it’s not how you would want it to be. You have to look at, yes, this works for that book.

And that’s challenging when you would want things to continue. But it’s a one-off.

[V.E. Griffith]
The character growth arc issue is always the big issue for me, in terms of making sure that it, making sure to get it right. Because readers will not tell you they’re looking for character change and character growth, but for most kinds of books, they are. Most books will take you on an emotional journey with the character.

Some stuff like Jack Reacher, not as much, but there is still a journey there as the character learns something new, and you go on a journey with the character as he learns about the world or about the situation or about the challenge or about the antagonist. Making sure that that is deliberately inserted into the text is very, very important because otherwise your character is just going to fall flat and you’re not going to make the reader believe that your character is an actual person. You’re going to get complaints that they’re cardboard, that they’re flat, that they don’t have any personality.

And so they need to grow and change through the course of your book, even if from one book to another, you’re dealing with basically the same character like Jack Reacher. For me, Montington, my main character, is going to grow and change during the course of the first book. And then when we get to the second book, he’s going to be the same character that he ended up as at the end of the first book because there’s no time gap between them, just so you know.

As you read the first book, there’s no time gap into the second. But making sure that that growth does occur and that the stage of growth that he is at when he reaches the end of the first book is very important in terms of making sure that my character growth arc across the series works too. I don’t want my Luke Skywalker character at the beginning of book one to become Yoda at the end of book one.

I want him to become Yoda at the end of book three. And so I need to make sure that the character growth arc that he is going on is long enough that I can fit character growth into all of the books.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That makes sense. Yeah. What do you think is most challenging about editing a series?

[V.E. Griffith]
The most challenging thing for me about editing a series is keeping track of everything that the author wants to accomplish in this book versus the things that are going to go into other books. This is particularly true if I haven’t read the other books. If a client comes to me and says, I want you to edit book three, I’m probably not going to go back and read books one and two unless they pay me to do that.

And most are not going to do that. So that means that the kind of edit, the kind of things that I’m going to be looking for are going to be different than if I am reading book three and I have done for you book one and book two, because I simply don’t have the knowledge. So I need to flag things in book three that don’t make sense to me and make sure that the author understands somebody coming into book three isn’t going to get this.

Is that what you intend or is that taken care of in books one and two and just sort of circling and read and say, hey, this doesn’t make sense. Can you explain it? If they can’t explain it, fine, go on with life.

If not, then they have work to do.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I would say it’s definitely keep track, that spiderweb that gets sent out there and you’ve got to make sure there’s enough feelers, that it’s not surprising and strange that something is happening later on, and that you don’t leave people hanging in really weird ways. Robert Jordan was great at doing such a thing. Take the character Matt, you fall in love with this character and you have him for four books and a wall falls on him and you don’t find out what happens to him until book nine.

So definitely making sure that there aren’t weird gaps that would tick off your readers because unless you like meaningfully want to tick off readers, that’s different. But if you are trying to keep your readers, then ticking them off usually isn’t the best option.

[V.E. Griffith]
That goes back to things that I’ve run into in previous manuscripts that I’ve edited, understanding which characters you want the reader to identify with and making sure that those characters are front and center so that they have growth arcs and so that the reader gets a sense of those characters in the way that you want. If they’re side throwaway characters, that’s great, but if you want the reader to identify with a character, they need a growth arc and you need to make sure that their presence in the story is consistent and not forgotten over the course of the story. That doesn’t mean, for example, that if you have two viewpoint characters, you have to alternate one chapter to the next in terms of viewpoint, but you do need to make sure that you don’t have one viewpoint character, a second viewpoint character, go back to the first, go back to the second, then go back to the first for eight chapters and then go back to the second unless you have some explanation about why that has to be. Your second viewpoint character is in a coma, for example. That makes it hard, but depending on the genre, dreams can be a thing.

So you want to make intelligent, intentional choices about lead characters and their viewpoints and their presence in the story so that they aren’t forgotten and that your readers who are in love with those characters, like Matt Cawthon, are not irritated unduly.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That also brings an interesting point of view is when you have different timelines. That is also something that can be challenging. And as an editor, we have to double down on timeline where we’re going to help pin down like this is happening at this point.

So if you have something happening over here, it’s got to be at the same time. Or like if they’re talking about it, it has to match up through those timelines. So I think that is probably the hardest thing for me is timelines.

[V.E. Griffith]
Just making sure that things happen in the correct order. That’s a big challenge, especially if you’re doing, for example, a book about time travel. Those can be really, really challenging to get all of your things in order.

I always look at for books that involve time travel. I always use Doctor Who as an example because Doctor Who has got time travel in it and the way they weave the time travel into the story or a story arc over the course of a season becomes very important. But in the moment can be either very scattered looking, which can be disconcerting or can be straightforward where you get to a time you don’t travel during the episode and then you travel again.

But then over the course of the entire season, you see how all of these things have come together to be a single story. It’s difficult to do. Sometimes you need tools like a spreadsheet or a word doc with your timeline in it.

Or if you’re doing firm dates and things that need to move around and you want more automation and more tools to help you keep track of that, you may use a tool like Aeon Timeline, which our friend Kim Lark uses. It’s a really good tool to help you keep track of things that happen when.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, it’s a really good one. Fun to play in.

[V.E. Griffith]
But very, very powerful and can be difficult to, there’s a learning curve.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
And you can get very caught up in it. So there are tools and then there are distractions.

[V.E. Griffith]
And now we’re back to, you know, the war of arts resistance, you know, Stephen Pressfield and resistance. So you need to make sure that whatever tool you’re using doesn’t get in the way of your writing. You want it to enhance your writing, not get in the way.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
All right. So my last question for you is what do you think a writer should let their editor know if they’re writing a one-off versus a series? Like what’s the big difference to chat with them about?

[V.E. Griffith]
I’m a believer in the idea that you shouldn’t hold spoilers from your editor. You want to hold spoilers back from your beta readers. You want to hold them back from test readers.

You want to hold them back from reader readers, but not from your editor. The reason is your editor, if you’re holding spoilers from them, your editor is going to have a harder time helping you fit your timeline together and fit all of the things that need to happen together over the course of the books. When I was going through my book with my story coach, I was careful not to hide things from him so that he could help me say, okay, if event Z is going to happen five chapters from now, then event X needs to happen now, and event Y needs to happen two chapters from now.

That’s the only way that it makes sense to work with an editor, particularly if you’re hiring a developmental editor, because a developmental editor’s job is to help you get all of those things right. So your editor needs to have all of the parts in their toolbox or in their puzzle box, rather, to help you put the picture of the puzzle together correctly. If they don’t have all of the pieces, that’s going to make their job harder, and it’s going to make your job as the author harder because the editor’s suggestions to you are going to be less effective.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, definitely don’t hide things, and that’s the same for either one, one-off or a series. I think the only thing I would add to that is if you are writing a one-off and there’s a possibility that you might think of writing a sequel to it, let them know. Be like, hey, I thought about this, and maybe that’s why I left this one other thing open.

Let me know if you think that that would be enough of a good lead way into a sequel in case I wanted to write one. So just adding those little bits really help out an editor figuring out your story.

[V.E. Griffith]
And there you have it.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yep, one-offs versus a series.

[V.E. Griffith]
All right. Well, I guess we will see everybody the next time.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Stay magical.

[V.E. Griffith]
Bye.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Thank you so much for joining us for today’s episode. You can find every episode on your favorite podcast player and on YouTube. For transcripts, please visit our website at revisionwizards.com.

They go live the same day as our episodes.

[V.E. Griffith]
If you’d like to reach out to us separately, you can find me at vegriffith.com and Ms. Catherine at scribes-pen.com.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Stay magical. I did it on the right side today. I felt very happy.

Because I sat there and I was like, yes, that felt correct. Because last time I did it with my left hand, and oh, oh no.

[V.E. Griffith]
But still nobody’s going to see you because I’m going to throw the video away.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I know. Nobody’s going to see it at all. But it just feels correct to do it.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
One of these days, we’ll have a clip of it, and we’ll just put sparkles coming out of my fingertips.